I Was the Jukebox: Poems

I Was the Jukebox: Poems

<p><strong>“[Beasley’s] lightness works best when it dapples her darkness―and when her darkness, as it often does, feels truly deep.”―Abigail Deutsch, <em>Poetry</em></strong></p> The winner of the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize―“These poems are fresh, crisp, and muscular. They are decisive and fearless. Every object, icon, or historical moment has a soul with a voice. In these poems these soulful ones elbow their way to the surface of the page, smartly into the contemporary now.”―Joy Harjo, prize citation<br /><br /> from “The Piano Speaks”<br /><em>For an hour I forgot my fat self,<br /> my neurotic innards, my addiction to alignment.<br /> For an hour I forgot my fear of rain.<br /> For an hour I was a salamander<br /> shimmying through the kelp in search of shore,<br /> and under his fingers the notes slid loose<br /> from my belly in a long jellyrope of eggs<br /> that took root in the mud.</em>